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When you take any signal and feed it to a normal signal chain--a preamp, EQ, Amp, etc.--and out through a speaker, it's going to lose quality. It's one of the great negatives of amplified music : any signal fed to a speaker will lose quality due to problems that all speakers have with phase and accurate amplitude reproduction.

This causes fundamentals and harmonics to be out of order or even reversed, making the sound muddy. Certain frequencies may be overemphasized because of phase problems making the sound inaccurate and just plain bad.

This BBE unit's circuitry puts the clarity back in your signal by correcting those problems. The circuitry gives the speaker a signal that it likes, one that it can re-produce more efficiently and with clarity and loudness. It makes the waveform that the speaker reproduces closer to the natural, unamplified musical signal.

Stratbrat - it is different then the RC Booster. fendrguitarplayr nails it application.

I leave my BBE Sonic stomp on ALL THE TIME. Whether I'm playing clean or dirty or using any and all pedals, the BBE just produces the best signal and sound. The only knock I've heard about the BBE Sonic Stomp is that is adds a processed or digital tone, but I don't hear it.

I love my RC Booster but the BBE Sonic Stomp is the best $80 addition to my rig.

I had one that I used briefly in my home studio. I used it once in line on my vocal mic and really liked the end result. I tried it once in our PA live for vocals and thought it sounded thin and processed. Oddly enough, I wasn't able to duplicate its result in the studio again. Got rid of it and bought the directx plugin. Still haven't found "it".

BB SM's came out originally as an alternative process to the Aphex Aural Exciter. The Aphex takes a high pass signal, creates even order harmonics (distortion) and mixes that signal back with the original signal. The process doesn't sound like distortion, but extends the high end.

For all the mumbo-jumbo about phase this, annomalities that, I believe (and I could be wrong) that BBE designed a process that produced a similar sonic result as Aphex with a different process. Upon examination of the circuit, the stages do create phase changes, but I'm not sure the phase changes were intentional, but a result of the circuits.

There is a known phenomena. If you hear three signals, and if they hit your ear at different times...even milliseconds apart, your brain will perceive the sound that reaches your ears first as the louder signal.

So you take the audio spectrum, split it into 3 bands, and delay the middle band a few milliseconds and delay the low band a few more. Your ears will hear the high end first, the midrange second and the bass last. The milliseconds are too short to hear or perceive those delayed signals as delayed, but the brain perceives the high end as louder, even though it may not be.

In this delay process, phase shifts do occur. So are the phase shifts intentional, or simply a result of the delay process, and BB is just describing the phase shifts as intentional?

BB stepped ahead of Aphex by including a bass control which can balance the increased high end. Aphex eventually added a low end control and a good one at that, which increases the low end without requiring larger speakers or power amps.

Aphex products were incredibly expensive in the beginning, so much so that only top shelf recording studios had them.

Prices of both processes have come way down over the years.

It is common for people to overuse this effect. It's best in small doses. The suggested setup for Aphex Aural Exciters when they first appeared was to turn up the process until you can just hear it, and then back it off a hair.

I have both Aphex and BBE enhancers, as well as a few others, like Roctron, Alesis, Boss, DOD, etc. They all have their place.

Steve, I'm not sure I know you but I read your profile and, well, very sad times for you lately. I hope things are going o.k. and I am sorry.

About the Sonic Maximizers, I have never tried one but I was wondering if it would give my PV Classic 30 a little more sparkle to the high end? My only complaint of this great amp is it's midrange heavy.

This seems like a really odd thing to put into an effect pedal. Couldn't you get the same thing out of an EQ pedal, or for those (and I've seen a few write ups like this) that leave their SM on all the time, the EQ built into the amp. Why would you really need a pedal whose only function is to increase high end?

The process is quite different from simple EQ. It adds a clarity and "breathiness" that can't be duped by EQ. Think of your tone with really dead strings, and then with a fresh set on. With the dead strings, could you just EQ them to sound like new strings? Hardly.

FWIW, treble boosters (and I'm not suggesting a BBE is a treble booster) have been used for years by guitar players to get their signature tones. Eric Clapton with his Marshall combo in the Bluesbreakers, Ritchie Blackmore with his Marshall Majors in Deep Purple, Toni Iommi in Black Sabbath, Brian May in Queen...and countless others.

For people who build their own effects, a germanium transistor based treble booster is one of the most popular builds.

You should hear a Dallas Rangemaster through a tweed Deluxe, or a Silvertone.

A BBE increases presence and clarity without adding any noise, and can lift a guitar in the mix the way no treble booster or EQ would.

It can add a "professional sheen" to bland mix.

Next time you hear a Def Lepard song, pay close attention to the vocals. The open airiness you hear is produced with an enhancer.

A BBE can improve intelligibility, and can help the PA reach further into a room.

They're very good for live situations where you just set up and run without two hours of serious sound check and tweaking. I know a couple guys who have become addicted to them because they are so easy.

One of the live users refuses to use any such circuitry in the studio because it does unnaturally alter the signal. When you take the time to get it just right, the maximizers tend to result in that overprocessed candy-ass '80s glisteny sheen.

I sold my BBE rack unit a couple of months ago - I really liked the clean, it improved the 'glassy' highs with enhanced bottom - but when I kicked an amp into overdrive, you could really hear the digital signal processing, not a natural sound.

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